Latino/as and Chicano/as revisited

[Laurence Horn]

Synchronicity at work once again.

Last night, Rima goes
===========
Date:         Tue, 6 Feb 2001 23:47:59 -0800
From: Kim & Rima McKinzey <rkm at SLIP.NET>
Subject:      Re: people of color & Chicano

Actually, I would like to know why "Hispanic" is offensive.  My
impression has been that Chicano/a referred to Mexican-Americans and
that Latino/a referred to those from other Latin or South American
Spanish speaking countries...
====================

and this morning I go
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Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:15:52 +0800
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
Subject: Re: people of color & Chicano

Leaving aside the question of offensiveness, on the referential side
I'd argue, as would the AHD4--

LATINO
1. A Latin American.
2. A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often
one living in the United States.

--that "Latino" does NOT criterially exclude Mexican-Americans (any
more than "finger" criterially excludes thumbs); given the existence
and salience of the term "Chicano", those Latinos/as who hail from
Mexico will predictably tend to be called Chicanos/as, particularly
when the more specific information is relevant.
=============

so I'm reading my detective novel* at the gym an hour ago and I come
across this passage:

"Behind the desk was a swarthy woman of about forty...She was a
Latina of some variety, but probably not a Puerto Rican.  Her skin
had a cinnamon sheen to it, her cheekbones were broad and sharp, and
her mouth had that lovely, lanceolate sculpting of the lips that said
Mexico."

(emphasis added)  So "Latina" here clearly covers "(probably)
Chicana/Mexican-American".  Now I should in fairness add that the
story is set in New York, and the narrator (and probably the author)
are New Yorkers; "Chicano/a" is far less salient as a classifying
term around here than it is in California, say.

So  I'm heading up the stairs to my office to report this finding and
I see a poster for a new course in American Studies and History, "The
History of Latinos in the United States".  Checking in the Yale blue
book, I find that this seminar includes a "primary focus on Mexican
American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban communities".  The same instructor
offers another more narrowly focused course in "Chicano Cultural
History".  A different American Studies instructor, on the other
hand, offers a course in "The Politics of Identity in Latino and
Chicano U. S. Literature".  Go know.

larry


*_Falsely Accused_, Robert K. Tanenbaum, 1996
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