¡BIENVENIDO! WELCOME TO THE HISPANIC AND LATINO AMERICANS PORTALHispanic and Latino Americans are an ethnolinguistic group of Americans with origins in the countries of Latin America or the Iberian peninsula. More generally it includes all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. Reflecting especially the Latin American population, which has origins in all the continents and many ancestries, Hispanic/Latino Americans are very racially diverse, and as a result form an ethnic category, rather than a race. While the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, Hispanic is a narrower term and refers mostly to persons of Spanish speaking origin or ancestry, while Latino is more frequently used to refer more generally to anyone of Latin American origin or ancestry, including Brazilians. Hispanic thus includes persons from Spain and Spanish speaking Latin Americans excluding both Portuguese and Brazilians (who speak Portuguese) while Latino excludes persons from Spain but includes both Spanish speaking and Portuguese-speaking Latin Americans. Persons from Portugal, and all other Portuguese-speaking peoples around the World outside the Americas (e.g. Cape Verdeans or Angolans), are neither Hipanic nor Latino. Latino is a broader term encompassing more people. The choice between the terms Latino and Hispanic among those of Spanish speaking origin is also associated with location: persons of Spanish speaking origins residing in the eastern United States tend to prefer the term Hispanic, whereas those in the West tend to prefer Latino. (more...)Selected article
On September 17, 1963, a freight train collided with a bus carrying 58 migrant farmworkers on a railroad crossing outside Chualar in the Salinas Valley, California, killing 32 people and injuring 25. It was the worst fatal vehicle accident in United States history, according to the National Safety Council.
The accident has long been a rallying point for immigration rights and Chicano farmworker activists. All but two of the victims were Mexican or Mexican-American, and most were Mexican guest workers participating in the bracero program, which had been in place since 1942 and had been drawing mounting criticism from labor activists and civil rights workers who contended that it exploited Mexican laborers and deprived Americans of jobs. The accident supported the views of critics that Bracero workers were treated shabbily, helping to spur the demise of the program in 1964. (more...) Selected imageDid you know...
2010 Selected biography
Linda Chavez-Thompson (born August 1, 1944) is a second-generation Mexican American union leader. She was elected the executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO in 1995 and served until September 21, 2007. She is also a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. She was the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of Texas in the 2010 election.
In 1967, Chavez-Thompson became a secretary on the staff of the Construction Laborer's Local 1253 in Lubbock, TexasLaborers' International Union of North America. When a tornado struck the Lubbock area that year, she volunteered to coordinate the Texas AFL-CIO's relief efforts. She enjoyed the job so much, she became a staff organizer for the North Texas Laborers District Council. Her first organizing campaign was to help city workers in Lubbock form a union. They were successful. (more...) CategoriesRelated PortalsAssociated WikiProjects
Things you can do
Hispanic and Latino American TopicsAfro-Latin American | Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans | Black Hispanic and Latino Americans | Californio | Chicano | Cuban American | Demographics of Hispanic and Latino Americans | Hispanic | Hispanic Americans in World War II | Hispanic and Latino Americans | Hispanic–Latino naming dispute | Hispanos | Latino | List of Hispanic and Latino Americans | MEChA | Mexican American | Puerto Rican people | Spanish language in the United States | Tejano | White Hispanic and Latino Americans Associated Wikimedia
|